Michael DeMocker / The Times-Picayune
New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin is interviewed at a breakfast meeting with the league's head coaches and the media during the annual owners meeting, held this year at the Roosevelt Hotel on Tuesday, March 22, 2011.

With the exception of 2007, when they pulled off one of the NFL's great upsets in Super Bowl XLII, Tom Coughlin's New York Giants have shown a puzzling history of collapsing after strong starts.

In 2009, they came to New Orleans undefeated for a matchup with the similarly blemish-free Saints and the understanding the winner might be the best team in football. The Saints annihilated the Giants, New York was never the same the rest of the year and New Orleans went on to claim the championship in Super Bowl XLIV.

Why the repetitive regular season declines? Coughlin addressed the issue Tuesday in New Orleans.

"That's what we're trying like heck to investigate and figure out," he said. "You know, there's been factors involved. Everybody has injuries, we have them, too."

In particular, Coughlin was asked how much responsibility quarterback Eli Manning bears for the team unraveling. Manning is a microcosm of the Giants problems, capable of immortal plays and genuine leadership one week and inexplicable boneheaded-ness the next.

In 2010, Manning threw a career-high 25 interceptions alongside 31 touchdowns and finished the season with just an 85.3 quarterback rating. It marked the sixth consecutive year in his 7-year NFL career he has amassed a double-digit interception total.

Coughlin conceded problems with Manning, but for the most part defended his quarterback.

"Yes, there's some bad decisions," he said. "At the beginning of the year last year we probably had, conservatively, four, five six tipped ball interceptions. I mean, guys who got their hands on balls and guys who are exceptional receivers. We all know you throw the ball over the middle and it gets tipped it's going the other way.

"There's areas where we've all got go get better," Coughlin said. "There were times we didn't run the ball the way we say we can run the ball or want to run the ball. So I'm just saying there's a lot of areas that need to be improved. And we had 17 fumbles, too! The first guy in this league he doesn't even go for the tackle anymore, he goes for the fumble and guys are doing a great job at that. We've got to take care of the ball better."

Still, is Manning where he needs to be on the arc to being an elite quarterback? Coughlin argued he is, while saying perhaps Manning should go down more often.

"He's a great student of the game, he wants the ball," the coach began. "He wants to be that type of hero. The guy works so hard. We don't have many sacks, he's a big part of that. He doesn't let it happen, but sometimes in doing that you put the ball in a precarious circumstance. Sometimes take the ball and go down. And I think that's something we've got to do a better job of coaching and understanding that.

"You don't ever want to take a guy's, whatever you want to call that, the 'will to make plays,' the 'competitive spirit,' you don't want to do anything to that but you have to, in that split second, you've got to try to enforce on that occasion sometimes a better judgment. Like for example, maybe it's 12 interceptions and a few more sacks, which wouldn't hurt our football team at all. That's where it has to start for us."

Overall, Coughlin seemed at a loss to explain the Giants in-and-out performances. It certainly wasn't injuries or turnovers last December that caused a startling home field meltdown against the division rival Eagles. That loss, coupled with a flat performance a week later at Green Bay, doomed the Giants to another year without a playoff appearance.

"Number one thing from our season is we told our players all along we cannot leave this in someone else's hands, that never works out for you," Coughlin said. "You take care of your own business. We had opportunities and we didn't get it done. We won 10 games and we didn't get in the playoffs. We felt like we should have but we left it up to someone else. Green Bay won and then went on and wins the whole thing. So that's the number one thing, but we have to finish better.

"I challenge people on the way the season ended because without the last 8 minutes of the Philadelphia game it might have been a whole different story," he continued. "For the majority of that ballgame, 52 minutes of it, we weren't a bad football team.

It was clear there was some underlyine frustration for Coughlin, who has seen his teams, led by New Orleanian Eli Manning at quarterback, turn in some scintillating performances right alongside some absolute turkeys.

"The irony of our season is the fact we did so many good things and yet we kind of were our own worst enemy," Coughlin said. "We lead the lead in takeaways, we lead the league in giveaways. In '08 we set the all-time record in the National Football League for fewest, ok, so now I'm this great coach at controlling the ball, taking care of the ball. And we throw for 4,000 yards, we've got all kinds of numbers - all that crap nobody wants to hear about, all they want to know is, 'how'd you do?' which is fair."

Coughlin's frustration with his team's in-and-out performance seemed to mount as he recapped it.

"Our defense is the best in the league on third down, we lead the in takeaways. We give up a lot of big plays, we have a lot of big plays; we lead the league in giveaways, so I mean, that's the irony of it," he said. "Our fourth quarters weren't very good at all, so that's where the finish comes from: the ability to finish the game, finish the thing strong, we all know - it's been proven over and over and we were examples ourselves - the hot team at the end of the year has a great chance to win it. We all know that. But it didn't happen for us.

"We've got to shore up," he said. "If we don't turn the ball over, we're a pretty good football team."